ksej | Dec. 14th, 2009 10:39 pm Reading 1 Scunthorpe 1 The cheapest train fare meant leaving Grantham at 0911 and arriving in Reading just before midday. We met Lindsay, who looked after Andrea while I wandered round the shops, eventually stumbling across Lakeland and buying some much-needed market supplies. Then we caught a shuttle bus to the station in time to be among the first Scunthorpe fans inside the ground. To my deep and abiding disgust, the refreshment points had no Fanta: I had to settle for Capri-Sun, which contained neither carrot nor pumpkin, and worse, came in a squeezable container that fountained juice when Andrea took hold of it.
The game didn't look too bad at first. Scunthorpe had one shot that the Reading keeper had to be alert to save, but we were once again giving away far too much possession in all the wrong parts of the ground. We rode our luck for a while, but eventually it ran out: the ball came right through our defence, flew across the penalty area, and someone stuck it past Lillis from about two feet out.
So how would the game go from here - would we crumble as we did at Watford, or stay in touch as we did against Leicester? The latter, as it turned out: I braced myself countless times for the second goal, but defending that was inspired and desperate by turns kept it out every time. Lillis had a couple of saves that backed up everything Adkins has said about his ability to stand in for Murphy, but the ball kept coming back down our throats again and again.
Half time came as a relief. We hung around the concourse with Karen, trying to talk ourselves into the idea that the second half was bound to be an improvement over the first. I refused to get my hopes up, insisting that it was likely to be every bit as bad.
Andrea began the second half with the surprised observation that "our goalkeeper's at the other end". He was indeed, still performing heroics from attacks that looked, as always, even more frightening for being a pitch away. As the second half progressed, Reading's continued failure to put the match beyond us gave us hope; we managed a bit of pressure, and I treated Andrea to a few of the words she's decided are "only for the football ground" as glorious-looking moves came to nothing.
Some tactical genius behind me shouted, "Do something, Adkins." I rolled my eyes: doing something for the sake of doing something wasn't going to help matters. Or maybe he was simply giving vent to his frustrations, much as I do with my football-ground vocabulary.
Another promising move. Hayes was almost through, but his sight of goal was blocked. He flicked the ball gently out to Hooper, who took a couple of steps and struck the equaliser. I lifted Andrea up to celebrate: she declared with more joy than accuracy that "Scunthorpe are winning." "No," I explained, "but we're not losing," and touched the badge on my shirt to ward of the tempting of fate. For this is the big problem with equalising before stoppage time: plenty of time to let in another.
Jonathan Forte came on for Hooper, and almost made the perfect impact. He was through on goal - he was going to give us an improbable and completely undeserved lead - the ball trickled the wrong side of the post. Ah well. Four minutes of stoppage time saw both teams trying to hang onto what we had, and we left with another rescued point. At least, that's how I saw it. To Lindsay, bearing in mind Forte's chance, it was two points lost. Leave a comment |
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